Monthly Archives: September 2008

Now that you’ve been enjoying Google Chrome’s headliner features and speed for almost a week now, it’s time to dig into the less obvious functionality and options you don’t already know about. Become a keyboard shortcut master, take a peek under the hood, and customize its behavior and skin with some of the best shortcuts, bookmarklets, themes, add-ons, and subtle functionality in Google Chrome.

Mousing Around Chrome

Despite its marketing as a minimalistic browser that forgoes all the extras, Chrome’s interface actually sports quite a few useful features. Here are a few that will speed up your browsing with the mouse even more:

Click and hold (or right-click) the Back or Forward button to go directly to a page far behind or forward in your browsing history.

When you’ve got a URL on your clipboard, right-click Chrome’s address bar to Paste and go to your destination (and save yourself an extra tap on the Enter key).

Click and drag any textarea corner to resize it to your liking; great for blog comments, web email, or forums with textareas that aren’t big enough to accommodate your masterpiece.

Ctrl+Mousewheel to zoom in or out of pages in Chrome.

Drag and drop downloads out of Chrome’s status bar and onto your desktop to save them there, or into any Explorer window to save them there. (You already know you can drag and drop a Chrome tab out into a new window, or back into an existing Chrome window to dock it there.)

Chrome’s Keyboard Shortcuts

If you’re not much for the mouse, you’re in luck: Google Chrome has lots of built-in keyboard shortcuts, many of which mirror Firefox’s—so you don’t have to retrain your fingers. Here are a few of our favorites:

(Chrome only)Ctrl+B toggles the bookmarks bar on and off.

(Chrome only)Shift+Escape opens Google Chrome’s Task Manager.

Ctrl+L to move your cursor to the address bar.

Ctrl+K moves your cursor to the address bar to enter a Google search.

Ctrl+T opens a new tab.

Ctrl+N opens a new window.

Ctrl+Shift+T opens the last closed tab.

(Chrome only)Ctrl+Shift+N opens a new window in “Incognito Mode.”

Ctrl+Tab cycles through open tabs; Ctrl+Shift+Tab reverse cycles through open tabs.

Tweak Your Options

Hit up Chrome’s Options dialog (click on the wrench, and choose Options) to customize Chrome’s behavior even more.

Set multiple tab as your home page. While Chrome’s default thumbnail page of your most visited sites is pretty cool, you might want to just skip that step and set the browser to open certain tabs every time. Like Firefox, Chrome can set several tabs as your homepage. In the Options’ dialog Basics area, under “Open the following pages,” enter the URLs.

Open the last session’s tabs automatically. Also like Firefox, Chrome can automatically restore the tabs from your last browser session. In that same Options area as above, just select “Restore the pages that were open last.”

Add the home button to your toolbar. Chrome’s toolbar is pretty sparse by design, but once you’ve set your homepage(s), you might want to get to them in one click. In the Options dialog’s Basics tab, you can also check off “Show Home button on the toolbar.”

Set your default Downloads save location. Also in Options—but under the “Minor Tweaks” tab—you can set Chrome’s default download location to something other than the “My Documents” folder.

Master Chrome’s Startup Switches

Like all good open source software, Chrome comes with a long list of “startup switches”—that is, parameters you can use when you launch the program to customize its behavior. While most of the switches are only useful to developers, a handful let power users do some handy stuff.

Quick primer: To use a startup switch, create a new Chrome shortcut on your desktop (or elsewhere). Right-click it and choose Properties. In the Target field, add the switch in question immediately following the path to chrome.exe. For example, your target using a -disable-java switch might look like:

Tweak the number of suggestions the address bar offers. Increase or reduce the number of suggestions in the address bar drop-down using the -omnibox-popup-count switch. For example, to increase it to 10 suggestions, use -omnibox-popup-count=10. [via The How-To Geek]

Create and maintain multiple user profiles. Since Chrome learns so much from your usage patterns, you might want to create more than one user personality based on the task at hand. For example, you can set up a “work Chrome” and a “play Chrome” user profile (like you can with Firefox’s user profiles). While Chrome doesn’t offer a handy utility to create new profiles like Firefox does, all it takes is creating a new user directory, and then using Chrome’s --user-data-dir startup switch to point it there. The Digital Inspiration blog runs down how to create and use multiple profiles in Chrome.

Speed up browsing by disabling functionality. When you want to surf Flash-free, Java-free, or even Javascript-free (even though that’s not really the point of Chrome, but whatever), there’s a list of -disable Chrome startup switches that can block plug-ins, content, or features you don’t want, like:

Always start Chrome in a maximized window. Take advantage of all that screen real estate you’ve got with Chrome. Using the -start-maximized startup switch, the browser will fill your screen on launch, automatically.

Themes

Dress up Google Chrome to your liking by downloading a Chrome theme and saving its default.dll file into the application’s Themes directory.

Open pages from Firefox in Chrome. If you’re browsing in both Firefox and Chrome and like to use Chrome for certain pages, the Open in Google Chrome Firefox extension does just that. With it installed, set certain links to open in Chrome, or select a link and choose “Open in Chrome” manually from the context menu.

Run Chrome from your thumb drive. When you’re in IT lockdown or traveling from computer to computer (but want to keep your Chrome settings), you want the portable, standalone version of Chrome (free download).

Shuck off Google’s Branding and Go Open Source with Chromium

Switch to the more frequently updated and open source version of the Chrome browser, called Chromium. Google expert Phillip Lennsen explains:

Do you want Google Chrome without Google’s branding and with an open source license (BSD license)? Check out Chromium, the open source project created for Google Chrome. You can install the latest snapshots for Windows or download the code and build it in Windows, Mac, Linux.

To install Chromium in Windows, go to the most recent directory from this page (it should be at the top) and download mini_installer.exe. Note that these snapshots could be less stable than the version available at google.com/chrome and you may need to manually update Chromium.

Look Forward to What’s Coming

Word on the street is that Chrome is coming for Mac and Linux users, as are extensions—plus it’ll be in Google’s upcoming mobile phone operating system, Android. (Linux users, if you can’t want for Chrome and don’t want to build Chromium yourself, here’s how to run Google Chrome in Ubuntu with WINE.)

What are your favorite Google Chrome tips and tricks? Shout ’em out in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes her Chrome tricked out just so. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

displaying a confirmation message that includes contextual information regarding the row being deleted

Below is a screen shot showing how it turned out. You can read on for the details, or you can download the site and browse the code for yourself. Hopefully DiscountASP will get upgraded to .Net 3.5 SP1 soon so I can get back to providing demos as well …

The Default Confirmation Dialog

If you use the Dynamic Data Web Site template to create your DD web site, the List.aspx page template will already include a default delete confirmation dialog that uses the browsers confirm dialog to prompt the user before allowing them to delete a record. Nothing too fancy here, the alert box just displays some static text (the same text is displayed for all rows). If the user clicks the OK button the record is deleted. Here is what that looks like …

And the markup for generating this dialog is also very straight forward …

Customizing the Confirmation Message

With just a small code change, we can make use of a few DD features to add some contextual information about the row being deleted to the confirmation message. You can ask DD to retrieve a display string for any of the rows that are bound to your grid. So, with a pretty simple change we can enhance our dialog to include the display string for the row being deleted. Here is a quick example of what this looks like …

And here is the markup for generating this …

Notice the change to OnClientClick. Instead of static text, I am asking DD’s MetaTable (the instance the grid is bound to) to retrieve the display string that corresponds to the rows data item. Simple.

So how does DD know what the display string is? Well, you have to tell it. And you have a couple of options when doing this …

Override the ToString property on your entity. Below is a partial class for the Northwind Employee entity. DD will detect that I have overridden the ToString method and will use it whenever the display name is requested for an Employee.

Apply the DisplayColumn attribute to your entities metadata class. If you don’t need to do any computations or formatting and just want to return a column value you can apply the DisplayColumnAttribute to your entities meta-class and set the DisplayColumn value to the column value you want to use for display purposes. Below is a quick example where I am using the Customer’s ContactName column as the display value (line 5) …

The only caveat here is that if you have applied a custom format to the DisplayColumn using the DisplayFormat attribute, it doesn’t look like this custom formatting will be applied when the display string is retrieved. Probably not a big deal especially since you can apply formatting using the ToString method I mention above, but it is still interesting. Here is a quick example of what I mean …

I have added the DisplayColumn attribute to my Customer metadata class like so …

// Use the ContactName column for the display name [DisplayColumn("ContactName")] public class CustomerMetadata {}

And applied the DisplayFormat attribute to the ContactName property like so …

Then when I request the DisplayString for the Customer rows, the testing suffix is not applied …

I didn’t expect that. But like I said, it really isn’t a huge deal because you can always use ToString to format the column value.

Plugging in jquery’s Thickbox

And finally, if you wish to use a different dialog box instead of the browsers default you can plug that into the List.aspx page template as well. I choose to use jquery’s thickbox, but if you prefer the AjaxControlToolkit’s ModalPopup you could easily implement that as well. Here is what I did to make use of the thickbox.

Add the markup for the grids ItemTemplate. There are 3 main controls in my template, a link that when clicked displays the thickbox, a hidden ASP button control that is used to force the postback that causes the row to be deleted and a hidden panel that displays the delete message for the row.

Next, I added a bit of code that runs as the grids rows are bound to the data items. I first extract the thickbox hyperlink, hidden delete button, the confirm button and the panel that contains the message. After I have all of these controls I populate the NavigateUrl property on the Hyperlink to include the correct options (including the ClientID of the rows confirmation message) and use the OnClientClick property of the Yes button to issue the delete by causing the hidden delete button to initiate a postback.

Conclusion

Again, I am pleased with the flexibility that Dynamic Data provides me. It’s these seemingly simple requirements of providing a custom delete message that I figured would be difficult to do with Dynamic Data.

Relational databases that speak SQL are the data-storage backbone for most developers. Unfortunately, but most of the data that’s created outside the control of the technology caste at a typical workplace is in Excel format. Because of this, being able to procedurally read and write Excel documents with a familiar language can open up a whole world of possibilities for automation and data migration.

Assuming you’re attempting to read and write standard text (Ie. not binary/graphic) data from Excel worksheets, this is actually fairly doable in PHP and Perl.

A recent article by Mike Diehl at Linux Journal peaked my interest in this. He shows off some of the features of the Spreadsheet::ParseExcel Perl module, which can be used to pull data and even formatting information from cells in an Excel worksheet. Once you have your hands on the data, you can do what you want with it: output it to XML, toss it in a database for subsequent querying, or even convert it into other Excel documents (oh, the shame).

With the most recent version of Excel, there is an XML file format option that will allow you to read and write data in a worksheet by directly interacting with the saved file’s DOM. IBM has a document that details doing this with PHP, and it would be straightforward to apply this technique to Perl as well.

Finally, if all you need to do is output a document that can be read in Excel, a standard CSV-format file will usually do the trick. Escaping can be a bit tricky, however, and my preferred format has become a plain-old HTML table. Just create a file that contains a TABLE element (no BODY or HTML tags necessary), with any number of TR rows and html-escaped data in the TDs, and save it out. If you use the XLS file extension, it will open directly in Excel with a double-click and Excel never seems to mind reading in the data.

Do you have any other Excel programming hacks? Give us a shout in the comments.

This week’s project comes from Frank (yep, the Woodcraft guy from Ep. 62). Let’s hear what he has to say:

Well, I finally completed my workbench. I would love to have a typical European style bench with a large twin screw vice on the side, but I have neither the space nor the funds. Furthermore, I needed a bench that I can easily move by myself, yet is strong enough to work with mortising chisels or hand planes. Also, because of my height, I prefer a bench that stands just a little higher than most.

This bench turned out to be a pretty good compromise. Its design revolves around the Zyliss vice and Veritas Bench Dogs / Wonder Dogs / Surface Clamp. My father purchased a Zyliss vice back in the 70’s and I have been very impressed with them ever since. New, they tend to be pretty expensive but if you keep your eyes open they are quite reasonable on eBay. I now have four of them.

The light wood is Alder and the darker is Eucalyptus. The Eucalyptus is not only beautiful but also tough as nails. I will say that if I were to do it again, I would replace the Alder with Hard Maple. The Alder is softer than I expected. I made the feet out of Ash to handle the abuse of being moved around. All of the joinery is either pairs of 10×50mm Dominos or Miller dowels. I finished it with Danish Oil and several coats of wax.

Road Trip! I was originally convinced that the Gadget Station would call for knife hinges. But just for fun I decided to take a trip to my local Woodcraft to see what they might suggest. Well, surprise surprise! I discovered a hinge that I had never noticed before. The Soss Invisible Hinge. I actually like this hinge better and I think it will suit this application perfectly. I hope you enjoy this little review of common hinges with our friend Frank Galloway, at the Chandler, AZ Woodcraft Store.

Using heavy, bulky pipe or bar clamps to glue up small panels and assemblies is not a good match. You need a clamping method that’s a better fit to the job.

My solution to this problem is the adjustable clamping jig you see in the photo above.The jig uses two parallel, pivoting arms to trap the workpieces. Clamping pressure is then applied by driving wedges between the arms and a pair of adjustable dowels. It’s both effective and very easy to use.

The drawings at right and below show how the jig is constructed. The two arms are bolted into pivot holes near the outside edge of the 3/4? plywood base. An arc of 1/2?-dia. dowel holes radiates from each edge to provide the adjustability. Add a couple of dowels and a pair of wedges and you’re in business.

The Digital Inspiration blog points out that new-browser-on-the-block Google Chrome shares one thing with Firefox 3 not mentioned in many press reports—a history-aware address bar, or "Awesome Bar," that can create some red-faced moments on a shared computer. If more than one person on your system is switching to Chrome, and you don't feel like staying in Incognito Mode all the time, creating a new profile in Chrome requires manually creating a folder in Chrome's application data folder, but that's all there is to it. Vista and XP users, hit the link below for help finding your Chrome profiles folder, and then creating a custom shortcut to launch your own Chrome without leaving tracks behind on others.

I loaded one of my test Ubuntu virtual machines today (one that I hadn’t used for a month) and, surprise, I had forgotten the password. This sort of thing happens from time to time, and if you’re new to Linux, it can be a little disconcerting.

Loosing your root password isn’t the end of the world, though. You’ll just need to reboot into single user mode to reset it. Here’s how to do it on a typical Ubuntu machine with the GRUB bootloader:

Boot Linux into single-user mode

Reboot the machine.

Press the ESC key while GRUB is loading to enter the menu.

If there is a ‘recovery mode’ option, select it and press ‘b’ to boot into single user mode.

Otherwise, the default boot configuration should be selected. Press ‘e’ to edit it.

Highlight the line that begins with ‘kernel’. Press ‘e’ again to edit this line.

At the end of the line, add an additional parameter: ‘single’. Hit return to make the change and press ‘b’ to boot.

Change the admin password The system should load into single user mode and you’ll be left at the command line automatically logged in as root. Type ‘passwd’ to change the root password or ‘passwd someuser’ to change the password for your “someuser” admin account.

Reboot Once your done, give the three finger salute, or enter ‘reboot’ to restart into your machine’s normal configuration.

That’s all there is to it. Now just make sure to write your password down on a post-it and shove it somewhere safe like under your keyboard.

Test pilot wanted

Looking for people who is interested in auto sport to become a TestFlight pilot for up-coming new release of AR1 iPhone APP.
During the TestFlight you will have access to the latest auto news and content from iPhone.